Photo gallery for New-look Chix: New coach, more players for Zeeland East

Zeeland East quarterback Jace Heneveld looked around Zeeland Stadium and liked what he saw.
He counted a few more players practicing for the Chix than in years past when the season kicked off Monday.

“We don’t have 20 kids. It’s nice to get into the mid-30s,” Heneveld said during a break in practice. “It looks a lot better. It looks like a football team.”

First-year Zeeland East coach Derek Pennington said he had 38 players in varsity meetings, 31 for the junior varsity and 35 on the freshman team.

Like Heneveld, Pennington is encouraged.

“That’s the kind of numbers we want to keep,” Pennington said. “And that’s with only three sophomores on the varsity. It’s a lot better than we’ve had here.”

Small rosters have hampered the Chix since the district split into two in 2006 and created the Dux of Zeeland West.

Zeeland East struggled to a 1-8 record last season and back-to-back 0-9 marks before that. Zeeland East, meanwhile, has gone 34-4 during that time while claiming a Division 4 state championship in 2006.

Pennington takes over after spending the previous two seasons as an assistant at Grand Haven. He has head coaching experience at Kalamazoo Loy Norrix, where he coached former Michigan State and Detroit Lions running back T.J. Duckett in the late 1990s.

Monday was the first high school football teams across the state could practice. They must work out without pads for three days before starting contact drills.

The Chix will run a spread offense under Pennington. He’s trying to teach them as much as he can, so they can move at a faster pace when Thursday arrives.

“This is just really an extension of the camp we ran in July,” Pennington said. “What I’m trying to do is implement as much as we can. We’re going to a lot of meetings, walk through and two practices. We’re handing out playbooks.

“We want to get that done, so when we get to Thursday we can just practice.”
The Chix’s first scrimmage is Aug. 21 at Plainwell.

Zeeland East opens the season Aug. 28 with a non-league game at Grand Rapids Forest Hills Eastern.

“We’ve got a lot of time,” Pennington said.